Feature or Bug: D&D's Power and Complexity Curve

[Giltonio_Santos]

Not a bug to me. Actually, it's something my players enjoy and look forward to. If we want a different narrative experience, we can always change the rules system. Luke Crane's Burning Wheel, for example, is excellent for creating the experience you described.

 

[Quartz]

As a counter-example, remember the 3E Epic Level Handbook? I absolutely hated the bestiary in that book, because all the monsters were just bigger, but not any different, and that's super boring. It was a quantitative change but not a qualitative change.

As a counter-counter example, look at some of the epic critters [MENTION=4303]Sepulchrave II[/MENTION] created for his Tales of Wyre.

 

[Reynard]

I just don't buy that someone is totally immersed in this fantasy world with make-believe creatures, bad physics, and illogical magic, surrounded by polyhedral dice, miniatures, and Doritos, with friends cracking jokes and making Star Wars references, but...oh noes!...zero-to-hero is what finally breaks immersion.

I don't mean momentary immersion. I mean the sense of verisimilitude, I guess, where the world of the game makes sense in and of itself.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I don't mean momentary immersion. I mean the sense of verisimilitude, I guess, where the world of the game makes sense in and of itself.

Yes, I know. I feel the same way about rapiers. But there are so many ways in which D&D breaks verisimilitude. Basically, there is no verisimilitude. So to pick one (or a handful) of those things and say, "This...this is the line of verisimilitude, and it has been crossed!" just doesn't ring true.

What that means is that we willingly ignore all those other immersion-breaking things. And therefore we could, if we really wanted to, ignore our pet peeves as well. They are only immersion-breaking because we allow them to be.

Again, that's not to say you're wrong about zero-to-hero being problematic. Just that it's not objectively more immersion-breaking than a million other things. It just bugs you more.

 

[Reynard]

Yes, I know. I feel the same way about rapiers. But there are so many ways in which D&D breaks verisimilitude. Basically, there is no verisimilitude. So to pick one (or a handful) of those things and say, "This...this is the line of verisimilitude, and it has been crossed!" just doesn't ring true.

What that means is that we willingly ignore all those other immersion-breaking things. And therefore we could, if we really wanted to, ignore our pet peeves as well. They are only immersion-breaking because we allow them to be.

Again, that's not to say you're wrong about zero-to-hero being problematic. Just that it's not objectively more immersion-breaking than a million other things. It just bugs you more.

I would argue that it is objectively bigger (as in of wider scope) than other kinds of disruptions and therefore objectively harder to ignore. In order for it not to be disruptive from an immersion standpoint, you have to create the world with the power and complexity built in, which is inherently limiting.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I would argue that it is objectively bigger (as in of wider scope) than other kinds of disruptions and therefore objectively harder to ignore. In order for it not to be disruptive from an immersion standpoint, you have to create the world with the power and complexity built in, which is inherently limiting.

Well, there's the fact that a lot of people don't find it "disruptive" as you do. Sure, if they think about it, it doesn't make much sense. But it doesn't bother them, so it doesn't disrupt anything.

And those other people do find things disruptive that you don't.

Like I said, it's all subjective. We all are bothered by different..."problems"...with verisimilitude. And that's cool. But to take any one of them and say that it's the straw that broke verisimilitude's back is, well, just our own biases.

And liking any one of these things as a matter of personal preference is totally valid.

 

[5ekyu]

I don't mean momentary immersion. I mean the sense of verisimilitude, I guess, where the world of the game makes sense in and of itself.

One mans world may be another mans nonsense.

Have not seen anything intrinsic to either zero to hero or flat progression that links either to sensible worlds or nonsensical ones.

The GM and players are responsible for the sense of that world. That is regardless of progression.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Check out this thread on simultaneous movement.

Seriously, what could be more immersion-breaking than asynchronous, turn-based movement?

I'll amend my earlier claim to be more specific: we call "immersion breaking" those things that we would do differently if we were in charge.

Since simultaneous movement is rather hard to solve in a turn-based game (to say the least), very few of us think, "Gosh the one thing I would change is movement so that it's simultaneous." We might sometimes wish it were so, but I don't think any of us would put that on our wish list for D&D 6e because we don't ourselves know what the solution looks like.

And therefore we just shrug and accept it the way it is, despite how little verisimilitude it has, and we don't let it get in the way of a good time, and we don't complain about it breaking immersion.

EDIT: And if there's somebody out there who does think they have a great solution, I'll bet such a person thinks that asynchronous movement is totally immersion-breaking...

 

[Reynard]

Have not seen anything intrinsic to either zero to hero or flat progression that links either to sensible worlds or nonsensical ones.

I will try and present an example that explains my point of view on the subject:

The player characters hail from a village on the edge of the frontier. Goblins lurk in the dark forest making trouble for locals. As neophytes, the PCs must trek through the forest to get to the Lost Shine of XP and Gold. Their travel through the forest is tense and full of danger. After all, it is a dangerous world out there. While at the Shrine of XP and Gold, the PCs rise to 3rd level (not an unusual amount of XP gain for a 1st level adventure). The way back through the forest, just a week perhaps later, is not so tense. And encounter with 1d4+1 goblins with a 25% chance of a wolf is not nearly as frightening. All the fear and tension that was part of the world is now gone. Was it a lie all along?

There are some solutions, but they require the DM to either change the game rules or build the world around the zero-to-hero progression. Maybe the forest was full of orcs and wargs instead of goblins and wolves. That will certainly extend the "life" of the danger of the dark forest, but the consequences for surrounding world design elements are real. Or maybe the forest does not have set inhabitants and instead CR based encounters (random or otherwise). Now the world is a place of fuzzy boundaries and uncertain reality.

Does that make my position clearer, or at least illustrate what I say when I mean immersion breaking?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

All the fear and tension that was part of the world is now gone. Was it a lie all along?

Danger is always relative, and fear is a matter of perception. It makes sense that they would be afraid on the first trip, but not on the return, because they are significantly different people than they used to be.

Imagine it's raining outside, and I make a miserable trek to visit a friend, whereupon I dry out and they let me borrow an umbrella. The return trip is significantly less miserable, not because it stopped raining, but because I now have an umbrella. The rain was never a lie, but my status has changed such that I don't care about it as much.

Does that make my position clearer, or at least illustrate what I say when I mean immersion breaking?

That doesn't clarify why it's more immersive for you when a skilled warrior is just as afraid as a novice one. No matter what scary monsters live in the woods, they're going to be frightening to some people, but not to others. That seems like common sense to me.